This netsuke represents the Shokuin, a fantastic creature of the Far Eastern mythology, also known as "kirin-faced man," who became a subject of netsuke, for the first time, when represented by the famous artist Yoshimura Shuzan in the eighteenth century. The signature Gyokushin (玉 心) is engraved under the right hoof.

There is no mention of Gyokushin, the author of this netsuke except for a model present in the Werdelmann collection of the Kunst Palast Museum in Düsseldorf that bears a very similar signature. An analysis based on a stylistic ground allows to state that this piece of the Lanfranchi collection was possibly realized in the second half of the nineteenth century.